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Environmental Protection Agency will soon issue rules regulating
radon in drinking water. But according to a recently released General
Accounting Office report, the agency has some work to do first —
it has underestimated the costs of its proposed standard by at least
20 percent.
EPA's failure
to come up with reliable cost figures is not the biggest problem
with this and other agency rulemakings. Questionable agency science
means that we can't be sure of any benefit from all the money we
spend on EPA regulations.
In the early
1990s, the EPA Science Advisory Board criticized an agency report
that alleged serious radon risks. The board noted that "there
is no direct epidemiological or laboratory evidence of cancer being
caused by ingestion of radon in drinking water" and that "it
is not possible to exclude the possibility of zero risks for ingested
radon." The SAB chairman concluded that a standard of 10 times
less stringent than EPA's proposed standard would prove sufficient
to protect public health.
In 1998, the
National Research Council (NRC) issued a congressionally mandated
risk assessment, which was supposed to settle the issue. But the
report simply rehashed the same questionable data. It showed elevated
cancer levels among miners who smoked heavily and inhaled very high
levels of radon gas as well as nitrogen oxides and mineral dusts
in mines. Neither the NRC nor EPA has been able to establish that
inhalation of low-level radon gas at home or ingestion in water
causes cancer. NRC noted that ingestion risks might well be zero.
Yet the NRC
report speculates that radon released from drinking water into the
air might cause as many as 160 deaths (mostly among smokers) annually.
Ingestion of radon in water might cause 20 deaths a year. Based
these estimates, EPA claims that its 1999 proposal would save a
total of 62 lives.
The EPA and
NRC ignore the fact that radon may not only be safe at low-levels,
but that such exposures might even be beneficial. Studies
indicated that our bodies create defense mechanisms against chemicals
and radiation when we are exposed to low levels, which protect us
from harm when exposed to higher levels. Some have even shown lower
cancer rates in areas of the nation that have the highest radon
levels. There are limits to such "ecological" studies,
but they do cast doubt on the claim that radon increases cancer
risk.
Failing to
consider any such possibilities, EPA proposes to reduce the radon
levels in drinking water from 4,000 picocurie per liter (pCi\L)
to 300 pCi\L. EPA estimates that this change would cost $407 million
and deliver $362 million in benefits. Having failed the cost benefit
test, the agency justified its proposal based on a provision of
the 1996 Safe Drinking Water Act. This provision allows public water
systems to meet a less stringent standard if the state, locality,
or public water system sets up an EPA-approved plan to regulate
radon found in indoor air.
To that end,
the EPA rule would allow systems to stick with the 4,000-pCi\L standard
if they operate in an area that has an EPA-approved "multimedia
mitigation plan." EPA then assumes that states will choose
the mitigation route, bringing the cost of the regulation down to
$80 million. Rather than simply offering more flexibility, the mitigation-route
law will enable EPA an excuse to enter into an entirely new area
of government regulation: Control over levels of radon in indoor
air. There are serious problems with this approach. The GAO says
that costs could be much higher than EPA estimates. Radon remediation
technology can cost thousands of dollars for an existing home and
requires continual monitoring. Mitigation plans may impact new home
construction, raising the price for these homes.
Past attempts
to regulate radon in indoor air have in fact been quite expensive,
as Leonard Cole documents in Element of Risk: The Politics of
Radon. For example, a New Jersey program permanently displaced
residents from their homes after the government spent millions removing
soil from under homes. The state then spent years and millions more
trying to dispose of the soil as political debates raged over disposal
options.
All of this
debate, regulation, and cost, yet studies still can't clearly demonstrate
a risk of radon in homes. Nor can they determine how much it will
cost us. But there is one thing we can be sure of: The regulators
will have lots of jobs, and the regulations cost us dearly.
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